Drone hunting in Shenzhen – Spotted by Max

Back in May, I saw a YouTube documentary of Wired Magazine on the rise of Shenzhen, a.k.a. the Silicon Valley of China. It’s new, it’s booming, so that was the perfect excuse for me to have a look.

I flew from Shanghai to Shenzhen to find myself in a surprisingly more pleasant and tropical China. Shenzhen is very comparable to Hong Kong. You get the same international vibe. They do everything to make foreigners feel at home: western restaurants, an art district and a street with decent pubs and clubs.

I decided to go drone hunting in Huaqiangbei, the hardware market district in Shenzhen. People from all over the world come here to close deals on hardware. So I decided to head over to Huaqiangbei and look for the best drone deals out there.

Drones for everyone!

I talked with 5 different drone retailers. I asked each of them the same question: What’s the best drone for a reasonable price? A good indication of credibility is that I got a certain overlap of recommendations. Based on these recommendations I took the liberty to sum up the best deals out there.

Flyster Skyhunter

When you are looking for a reasonably priced drone with high camera resolution, you’ll have to be happy with the Flyster Skyhunter. This drone is yours for 60 euro and has an 8 megapixel camera resolution. 8 megapixels is fine, but it’s not relevant in today’s standards. This price also includes an operating application, but unfortunately it is not really equipped with a fresh interface. At 60 euro you can’t expect the whole package and you won’t get it either. The drone doesn’t feel stable when flying and the overall experience has cheap written all over it.

Zerotech Dobby

I was not looking for an OK drone, I wanted a user-friendly drone equipped with an HD or 4K camera. These standards brought me to the Zerotech Dobby. Downside: I wasn’t able see it in action, so I had to rely on what the sellers told me. When back home I found some very thorough reviews on YouTube. You can clearly see a very decent video quality and relatively good image stability. The downside here is that the design still looks very cheap.

DJI Spark

Then I asked for the best of the best for a reasonable price. All retailers pointed out the same device: the DJI Spark. DJI is China’s most famous drone brand, a year ago they went public with the GoPro of drones, the DJI Spark. The DJI high quality drones are sold everywhere in the world and you can be certain that it’s equipped with the latest and greatest. The Spark, for example, has HD capturing, facial recognition and hand tracking. For 600 euro, all of this technology can be yours.

My advice is to pay a bit more for a quality product. If you want to go for a more reasonable drone, keep in mind that cheaper models result in significantly lower quality. Below 75 euro you get a kids toy with limited quality.

Interested to follow Max through the lens of his camera?
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